I'm not the Messiah

 Humor and sport  “I’m not the messiah”

It is today 50 years ago that Monty Python was sent by the BBC for the first time, I was 12 years old but still had to wait a couple more years before I could see them for the first time. I loved it right away and have done so eversinds. There are a couple of great comedians, that has shaped my way of thinking and I believe it has also great impact on the way I have developed my badminton training. What has comedy done with my way of looking at our sport?

Well I have an extreme open view on everything and I’m looking very critical to everything and everyone, that include also myself. At the age of 18 I thought I know a lot about Badminton and I was wrong, now at the age of 62 after almost 45 years has a coach and spending lots of hours on this amazing sport every day I’m very sure that I know very little about the complexity of this game we call Badminton.

When you look at the development of humor and the people who are bringing this great way of thinking, you see the same kind of development. Most things you thought here funny when you were young don’t seem so funny anymore when you get older, but some things beat the thing we call “time”. 

Groucho Marx (1890) together with W.C.Fields (1880) are the oldest comedians that I still love today and to read there quotes https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/groucho-marx-quotes  see them in there old movies and shows is still great today, the things they did and said will still shock people today. https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/w-c-fields-quotes

From these two great oldtimers we come to Monty Python, almost all of the work they did was great and some was just funny but other things made you think and change your mind, and what better way to do that than with laughing. The best work they did in my eyes was “The live off Brain”. I just wish I was one of you out there that have not seen this movie yet and I could sit down and see it again for the first time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DchPUl2f_4w

But it is not only comedians that can make you think in a completely different way, in order to put words to your thoughts it is important to be a good debater and have your arguments is place. Especially when you have a different approach to things than most other people have. Live is not getting more easy to think in an other way than mainstream but it for sure is more fun and helps you to become one of the best. I believe that Christopher Hitchens is one of my great inspiration when it comes to the open debate and to make sure you have your arguments in place before starting. Everybody is against you when you are not following the mainstream and

There is nothing more that they love when you make a mistake because then they can jump on you, what people don’t realize it that is making us only stronger. I hope that people can just look at this clip of Hitchens and get the same admiration for the man, maybe not for his opinion but for the way he debating his thought. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DchPUl2f_4w

A good coach don’t believe the things he has been told, he listens to these things he thinks about it and try to destroy it, if by any chance you still agree about the things you have been told you keep it until something better comes along. A good coach stimulate his players to be critical to his training and to that of others. If your coach can not give you a good argument for doing what he ask you has a player DON’T DO IT because he is on auto-pilot and not thinking anymore.

One of the most important things you have to remember has a coach: A training where people did not smile or have been Laughing is a failed training.

But then again I have been a coach for more than 40 years and admit that I don’t know so much about badminton and that I still need to learn a lot. “I’m not the Messiah”  :-)